Reuse: Wine Flour Banana Bread
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. A Saturday morning exploration with Wine Flour in banana bread.
At the Kumfer household we have been working towards zero waste. If you're wondering, we still have a long way to go. We've made big strides in key areas like food waste and Amazon boxes, a whole series of blog posts there if anyone's interested. :) A big part of the journey is experimenting. What better way to get the kids involved in experimenting than baking. This morning we decided to explore a potential way to extract more from our vineyard - WINE FLOUR.
Grape skins are high in antioxidants and a good source of many minerals. After the winemaking process, grape skins are discarded - hopefully for compost but sadly often just in the garbage. Wine flour is an alternative use for the grape skins and can be used as a substitute or an additional component in recipes to add flavoring, coloring, and nutrition. We discovered the idea on a trip to the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York through this product from Sustainable Viticulture Systems and this is our first trial using it as a supplement to banana bread.
The result, I could not taste the grape skins in the recipe. There was a nice increase in complexity from the tannins in the skins. As with red wine though the complexity came with a drying effect to the tongue and made the banana bread feel less moist. Some recipe tweaking is order but all in all I was pleasantly surprised with the results AND the kids had a blast helping make and eat the bread. See more images of the fun on our social accounts: